Who Cares

Luis Cerveró
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This is a sweet short improvised video featuring the remarks of a Japanese couple during their holidays. Who cares? presents us with a frivolous, frugal and poetic reflection on those clichés with which the American friend has polluted all Western cultures. Cerveró demonstrates that holiday moments are the same here in Japan, as they are on television.

Who cares? is a combination of a music video, a holiday home video (everyone is relaxed, having fun and partaking in private games), and a wedding video (of the honeymoon, or the video before the wedding itself, or none of the above). It features the incidental presence of a third actor in this relationship, the camera. The story centres around Akie Tsuchiya (her) and Ytaka Tsuchiya (him). At no point are we informed whether their relationship is of the amorous kind or not.

The anxiousness of their first meeting - an interrupted song - is dissolved with laughter. Tension is avoided with an act of multicultural creativity, which establishes a strange correspondence between clichés of far away countries. The main characters are introduced: her song, swimming pool, grandma’s tales (while she pulls at a rope), each of them seem to urinate on their own cup (identifying with their fluids), recital of the myths of American underground culture (Fort Nox, Patty Hearst, Plastic Man, Metadona), false take, jokes, they sing together the final song, The Flinstones, while they smoke and laugh. We witness a dialogue that is conditioned by the holiday time frame and is amplified through gestures and gazes; a dialogue that reveals no intimate information about the characters, except for their names at the beginning (and with very big letters). The camera is the third character in this relationship, it tries to seduce the woman, it gets close to her lips and her bathing suit, suggesting an erotic relation.

Common links that reach beyond language, particular pop myths that are trivially disseminated. The American cultural clichés and referents of a Japanese couple could be the same as those we have in Spain. And yet, this does not prevent a communicative exchange of the smallest common denominators. Ours is a culture fabricated by the media, that unifies global thinking. This video presents a pop infatuation, with which Cerveró illustrates the internationalization of a domestic culture of holidaying uniformly constructed by television.

Technical datasheet

  • Title: Who Cares
  • Direction: Luis Cerveró
  • Production: Luis Cerveró. 2004.
  • Duration: 00:03:23
  • Languages: Japanese
  • Subtitles: Spanish
  • Original format: Quicktime
  • Formats: Betacam Digital - DVD
  • TV systems: PAL
  • License: Copyright